Wireless communications networks can sometimes increase their geographical coverage area by using relay stations between the base station and at least some of the subscriber stations, thereby effectively extending the transmission range of those base stations and subscriber stations. However, this may not increase the effective network bandwidth, and may even decrease it, since more devices must share the available bandwidth resources and some of the transmissions are repeated by being forwarded. In particular, the bandwidth of direct communications with the base station may not increase because the bandwidth of the base station itself may be limited, which limits the total effective communications bandwidth for the entire network. These issues may become even more of a problem when multiple tiers of relay stations are used.